


Filling In The Blanks (and i think about it every day)

by Sylviavolk2000



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Coda, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Episode: s12e03 The Foundry, Episode: s12e03 The Foundry coda, Fluff, Gen, Post-Episode: s12e03 The Foundry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-03
Updated: 2016-11-03
Packaged: 2018-08-28 19:13:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,625
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8459686
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sylviavolk2000/pseuds/Sylviavolk2000
Summary: We'll never see this in canon, you betcha. Bridge scenes between episodes 3 and 4, with heavy Dean angst.





	

 

 

Text from Dean to 666, some days earlier: fyi NOT DEAD so u better not be the one messing w S got that?  
  
Return text: WTF?!?  


#

  
... the bunker door slammed behind Mary.  


Below, Sam winched, breaking eye contact with his brother.  
  
In the Sagamore Hills, the angel Castiel stiffened. He broke off in mid-word, and Crowley looked at him with interest.  
  
In the Marianas Trench, Lucifer screamed as his vessel decayed.  


#

  
"Phone's on the move," Sam said, staring at his own phone; it lay on the kitchen counter, halfway between him and Dean. "She's jacked a car, she's driving."

Before Dean gave his phone to Mom so they wouldn't be out of contact, back in Missouri, they'd turned on the GPS. Sam doubted Mom would know to turn off a GPS, not yet - she wouldn't even know what GPS was. He hoped. He didn't think Dean would take well to losing this small last scrap of contact.

(They'd better tell her about the GPS thing, and soon. It wasn't safe leaving that on.)

They'd ended up in the kitchen, not talking. Dean was doing the blank thing. Sam remembered when Bobby died, and it made his guts knot, that dead-silent time when they'd just sat around Rufus' cabin in shock, looking at nothing mostly, and Dean had barely spoken for an entire week; then he hadn't spoken about anything but the Leviathan case for another week; even after that, Dean had been violently against phoning Bobby's friends to tell them of the death.

Dean always fought. Whatever touched him, he immediately began struggling, heels digging in, denying all feeling, shaking his head and looking away and blowing up if forced to face whatever it was - an instinct too strong. If something disturbed him, he fought it. If something drew him, he fought it. Sam wasn't sure Dean even knew how to stop fighting. It was part of what made Dean such a good hunter. It was part of what made him hard to live with. A big part.

"She's heading to Lawrence."

"Yeah," Dean said.

There. Speech. Good, but better not push it.

"She's got plastic. And she's a hunter, she can handle herself," Sam blurted, immediately breaking his own vow not to push it, but he wasn't good with silence himself, he always wanted to get it all out and make sure Dean understood. You could convince other people of things by example. With some people you just had to work harder at it. "She'll come back. She said it was only for a little while, that she had to process, and she has your phone, she knows how to call us if she needs--"

Dean got up and went out of the kitchen.  


#

  
Something played a rock riff, and Mary nearly swerved across the opposing lane before she juggled the phone out and figured out how to answer.

"Dean," said a deep voice. "Has something happened?"

"Castiel?"

For a moment the angel didn't answer, but she heard footsteps, and a door shutting. "Mary."

"Is there someone you don't want hearing?"

"It's alright. Mary, may I speak to Dean?"

"He's ... not here." She had swerved again, and corrected, with a shout out the car window: "Learn to drive!" Back to the phone, she said, "He's, uh ... he's with Sam." Out the car window: "Learn to drive with your head outa your ass!" To the phone, "If you phone Sam, you ought to find him."

A voice began to yammer in the background. She hadn't heard the door open, and she wondered. Castiel said, "I can't talk now." Pause. "No, I see, this is a wrong number? I'm so sorry. I don't understand how this could be a wrong number, but ..." Pause. In a bone-chilling voice: "Back off, Crowley." Then quietly, "Of course you're a _perfect stranger_ , but have a nice day."

The call seemed to have ended. Mary threw the phone into the backseat so she wouldn't be tempted to answer again. _Phoning while driving, that's dangerous. There should be a law._  


#

  
 _She said she loved us._

It was never chilly in the bunker, but Sam still felt cold. Coffee, then. He'd brought along two beers too, as a peace offering. Dean hadn't said anything, but he had met Sam's eyes and nodded infinitesmally. Sam sat next to him and opened his laptop, but didn't bother looking anything up. They drank together, not talking, not looking at each other much, and the warmth of relief slowly seeped into Sam's bones.

"When I got back," Dean said suddenly, and it was so unexpected that Sam almost overset his coffee. He rescued it, bit his tongue, debated four different approaches for his answer and then went with number five: look calm, say nothing, don't push.

Dean set down his coffee cup and gripped the edge of the library table with both hands. "When I got back, that bitch had broken in here and she took you, Sam."

They'd drawn extra wards now, added secondary locks, done everything they could to MOL-proof the bunker. Sam had some ideas to do with things he’d read in the Cuthbert Sinclaire grimoires, ideas about concealment and shifting and traps for outsiders - Magnus had outlined a complete plan to render the bunker invisible - but that kind of major spellwork took time to prepare.  
****  
“Moment I saw Mom I knew it was gonna go south somehow. I knew it, Sam. Could feel it coming.”

“She’ll come back.”

Dean just shook his head a little. “Listen. Before Chuck left, he--”

Sam’s phone rang.

He looked at the call display. “Oh.” Yeah, Mom had Dean’s phone. He swiped to accept, saying, “Hi, Cas,” and held out the phone toward Dean.

“Hello, Sam--”

“Uh, hi, Cas.”

“Dean?”

Sam took his laptop and headed for his room, to give them some privacy.  


#

  
Mary sat in a hotel room, John's journal open in her lap.

The first time she'd read it, it had been with the blind eyes of mourning for her husband. This journal was his only memorial. And what her death - no, not her death, that was avoiding the truth: what she had done - what it had done to John, what it had put John through, well, that was easily read between the lines. Her darling had been left alone, with two boys in danger and an impossible burden. Yes, he had been a soldier, he had what it took to become a hunter, but that was beside the point.

The second time she'd read the journal, she'd stopped again to look at that old war snapshot, and she knew every one of John's Marine photos, and this wasn't one of them.

She didn't know whose photo it was. But from the moment she first opened the journal she had been getting things wrong.  


#

  
"Sam." Dean looked around the doorway of Sam's room, holding out the phone. "Your phone. Whoa. The hell are you doing in here?"

"Uh." Sam sat back in the midst of wall-to-wall boxes. "I thought I'd redecorate. How's Cas?"

"He's fine. Teamed up with Crowley in Cleveland."

"You're kidding me," Sam said.

"Well, you know Crowley. The king of team-ups. No news on the Lucifer front, though." Dean advanced into the room. "Except that he went head-to-head with Rowena, and Rowena trashed him good, which is something, I guess." He squatted down in the sea of boxes, next to Sam, and couldn't help cocking his head.

He hadn't seen so many books since, well, Bobby's house.

And speaking of which ... "Are those Bobby's books?"

"Yeah. I hauled them out of the storeroom."

He hadn't just hauled them out of storage. He'd stacked Bobby's books up on his ledges, high as the ceiling on three walls round, solid with Bobby's dusty lore-books. Piles of books on the floor too, solid along the wall-boards. Stacks of books. It looked to Dean like Sam had decided to insulate his bedroom in lore. A zillion books, and in the middle of 'em, Sammy.

"You're gonna have to triple-stack them," Dean said eventually. "Bobby had too many."

"I've got them all digitized," Sam said, "and last year when you were in Canada on that caillou thing with Merle I stashed a set of copies in the old Campbell cellar, you remember that? But, hey."

"Huh."

Sam pushed back his hair with both hands, and just grinned at him.

"D'you like the look?"

Happy Sammy. And Dean liked that, but he kept it to himself. Manly thoughts, Winchester. And, guns and knives for decor beat books any day, but he guessed that lore-books were weapons in their own right, especially any books that Bobby Singer had valued. "Yeah. I like the look. What made you think of Bobby all of a sudden?"

Unhappy Sammy, like the sun had gone behind a cloud. Sam looked away and bit his lip, then said, "Mom took Dad's journal. Sorry."

"Shoulda given her the Impala," Dean muttered. It had been hers first. But he hadn't wanted to.

" _No_ ," Sam said immediately and forcefully.

Good.

"She'll bring the journal back," Sam said.

Sammy was unpacking, Dean thought. He was moving in. Even though the English Men of fucking Letters had broken in here and the bunker was clearly compromised, and they ought to be beating a retreat - it was just plain common sense - they weren't going to run out, no more than Bobby had ever run out on his own dump of a house, no matter any danger, not until the place had been blown up under him. Because that had been Bobby's home.

There were no words for it. Dean crooked an arm around Sammy's neck, and felt a little better.

 _She said she loves us._

 _She’ll come back._

 _She will._

**Author's Note:**

> It just struck me that season twelve opens not just with Sam being abducted - the MOL went into Dean's home, blammed Castiel, and took Sam. And ep three ends not just with Mary leaving; she takes the journal. Dean's stress buttons, anyone? The series writers have been quietly hitting every one of them. About the only thing that hasn't happened is the Impala being stolen.


End file.
